Near-eye displays have the competing requirements of displaying images at a high resolution, over a large field of view (FOV). For many applications in virtual and augmented reality, the field of view should be greater than 90 degrees, and ideally the binocular field of view would extend past 180 degrees. At the same time, the resolution of the display should match that of the human visual system so that little or no pixelation is perceived in the virtual images. Combining these two requirements in a single system presents a number of challenges. To avoid the appearance of pixelation, the resolution needs to be on the order of 0.01-0.02 degrees per pixel. Over a 90-degree square field of view, this corresponds to 4.5 k×4.5 k pixels per eye or higher. Achieving such resolutions is challenging at the level of the panel, the drive electronics, and the rendering pipeline.
Additionally, optical systems that can project wide FOV images to the user with sufficiently high resolution over the entire field of view are also difficult to design. Systems architectures that are able to present the user with high resolution images over a wide field of view, while simultaneously reducing the rendering, data rate, and panel requirements will enable new applications for augmented and virtual reality systems.